the next time you see a link to a petition or someone raging about this decision being ‘anti-innovation’, remember Greyball. Remember the Metropolitan Police letter [regarding several sexual assaults which Uber didn't report to police]. Remember that this is about holding ULL, as a company, to the same set of standards to which every other mini-cab operator in London already complies. Most of all though remember: it is not about the app.

A “top-of-the-line” automated facial recognition (AFR) system trialled for the second year in a row at London’s Notting Hill Carnival couldn’t even tell the difference between a young woman and a balding man, according to a rights group worker invited to view it in action. Because yes, of course they did it again: London’s Met police used controversial, inaccurate, largely unregulated automated facial recognition (AFR) technology to spot troublemakers. And once again, it did more harm than good.

Last year, it proved useless. This year, it proved worse than useless: it blew up in their faces, with 35 false matches and one wrongful arrest of somebody erroneously tagged as being wanted on a warrant for a rioting offense.

[...] During a recent, scathing US House oversight committee hearing on the FBI’s use of the technology, it emerged that 80% of the people in the FBI database don’t have any sort of arrest record. Yet the system’s recognition algorithm inaccurately identifies them during criminal searches 15% of the time, with black women most often being misidentified.

This pale, amorphous lump of sculpted concrete is designed to resist almost everything in a city that it might come into contact with. Named for the London authority that commissioned it, the Camden Bench has a special coating which makes it impervious to graffiti and vandalism. The squat, featureless surface gives drug dealers nowhere to hide their secret caches. The angled sides repel skateboarders and flyposters, litter and rain. The cambered top throws off rough sleepers. In fact, it is specially crafted to make sure that it is not used as anything except a bench. This makes it a strange artifact, defined far more by what it is not than what it is. The Camden Bench is a concerted effort to create a non-object.

A former bicycle thief has revealed the tricks of the trade in an interview, which clearly and shockingly shows the extent that thieves will go to in order to steal a bike. He talks about the motivations behind the theft, the tools used to crack locks and how the bikes were moved around and sold for a significant sum. He also gives tips on how to prevent your bike from being stolen.
[...]

'Don’t be fooled by Kryptonite locks, they’re not as tough as made out to be. Also D-bars with tubular locks, never use them, they’re the most easy to pick with a little tool. It’s small and discreet, no noise and it looks like you are just unlocking your bike. With the bolt cutters we would go out on high performance motorbikes, two men on a bike.'

If it goes ahead, people’s progress across the structure would be tracked by monitors detecting the Wi-Fi signals from their phones, which show up the device’s Mac address, or unique identifying code. The Garden Bridge Trust says it will not store any of this data and is only tracking phones to count numbers and prevent overcrowding.

as Boing Boing says: 'London's subway system switched early to an abstract map (PDF), and it became a legendary work of design. It just published an internally-used geographic version of map (PDF), however, for the first time in a century—and it's awesome.'

Y! is moving to Dublin to evade GCHQ spying on its users. And what is the UK response?

"There are concerns in the Home Office about how Ripa will apply to Yahoo once it has moved its headquarters to Dublin," said a Whitehall source. "The home secretary asked to see officials from Yahoo because in Dublin they don't have equivalent laws to Ripa. This could particularly affect investigations led by Scotland Yard and the national crime agency. They regard this as a very serious issue."

'One case involved Julian Assange's current home at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where visitors were surprised to receive welcome messages from a Ugandan telephone company. It turned out the messages were coming from a foreign base station device installed on the roof, masquerading as a cell tower for surveillance purposes. Appelbaum suspects the GCHQ simply forgot to reformat the device from an earlier Ugandan operation.'

AUTHORITIES IN LONDON’S financial district have ordered a company using high-tech rubbish bins to collect smartphone data from passers-by to cease its activities, and referred the firm to the privacy watchdog. The City of London Corporation, which manages the so-called “Square Mile” around St Paul’s Cathedral, said such data collection “needs to stop” until there could be a public debate about it.

Nice visualisation. 'What the map shows is the mix of transport to work of residents living in each part of London*, using ONS data at Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) level. Each MSOA is given an RGB colour determined by the modal share, with red colours representing travel by car, taxi or motorbike, blue travel by public transport and green cycling or walking. The result is a fairly simple pattern, with motor vehicles predominating on London's fringes, public transport in the inner suburbs and cycling and walking in the very centre. Those tendrils of blue reaching out presumably represent major public transport links.'

Japanese designer yuri suzuki has sent designboom images of his 'london underground circuit maps' project developed as part of the designers in residence program at the london design museum, on show until january 13th, 2013. responding to 'thrift' as a theme, suzuki's work explores communication systems in consumer electronics.
a printed circuit board (PCB) is used as a precedent for developing a electrical circuit influenced by harry beck's iconic
london underground map diagrams. by strategically positioning certain speaker, resistor and battery components throughout the map,
users can visually understand the complex networks associated with electricity and how power is generated within a radio.

truly amazing artwork, as featured in the BBC4 documentary 'Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art' last week. 'The Island satirises the London-centric view of the English capital and its commuter towns as independent from the rest of the country. The artist, a Londoner with a love of his native city, offers up a huge range of local and personal information in words and symbols. Walter speaks in the dialect of today, focusing on what he deems interesting or mundane.'

'“It’s free to advertise,” Ned explained. “And we have a lot of things we don’t need.” So each week, they advertised for sale in Loot something from their apartment. This was their social life. Some weeks – the good weeks – they had three or four people who came to see what they were selling.'